Readers of my blog know that I have blogged (some call it tilting at windmills) extensively on the subject of global climate change – all with the intention to point out five basic and seemingly incontrovertible facts.

One, climate change is a chaotic system whose natural variability and feedback loops make it impossible for man to change climate on a global scale.

Two, even with today’s instrumentation, the long time scales and instrumentation errors makes it unlikely that we can even see the results of any policies that are implemented within ten lifetimes.

Three, climate change proponents are driven by their self-interests; be they achieving political control over our nation, draining our treasury for personal profit or to implement a political ideology foreign to most Americans.

Four, that the costs being expended on global warming are better off being spent on repairing or replacing our crumbling infrastructure, improving our food supply, water sources and cleaning our land of pollution (not creating and trading pollution indulgences to generate Wall Street profits.)

Five, that all of the extreme weather predictions have been generated by significantly flawed computer models using questionable assumptions and highly manipulated temperature data. Some coming from so-called “climate proxies” such as tree rings which are then combined with other temperature observations – to the point where the confidence interval and error probability is so large as to render the result statistically insignificant. All results being within the band (+/- one degree Celsius) of natural climate variability. Not to mention that models do not predict or reflect any cooling trends that are presently occurring.

Six, the Earth has been hotter and colder, with more atmospheric CO2 and with less atmospheric CO2 – all without man’s influence or intervention.

Now, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, we are finding out that the discussion of global climate variability has been affected by hysterical alarmists and others acting in their own self-interests.

“The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder: The latest research belies the idea that storms are getting more extreme.”

“Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions.”

“But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.”

“As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. ‘In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,’ atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. ‘So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.’"

“In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. ‘There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather,’ adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.”

Dueling models …

Again, we caution readers that these results are not conclusive and exist only within the silicon brains of computers. And like all modeling efforts, it all depends on the assumptions, programming and data input.

But the real questions remain unanswered …

Are we seeing anything different from what would be expected from the natural variability of climate as we move out of the “little ice age” to a warmer environment and as we continue to regress to an unknown global temperature mean? Or in simpler terms, has the global temperature rise peaked and are we returning to a colder world?

How significant is man’s contribution to global climate change and can a single nation affect the massive changes it would require to alter global climate?

Is global warming – or global climate change – simply a scheme to promote a political ideology and a plan of wealth re-distribution which would generate significant profits for the special interests promoting the scheme?

Again, according to the Wall Street Journal …

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

A common sense question …

Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change—as it always has.

Bottom line …

It is intuitively obvious to me as well as other scientists that we do not know enough about global climate change to implement public policies involving greater government bureaucracies, higher taxes, reduced personal freedoms and the creation of wealth for those who produce nothing but paper trading profits.

And that any money being spent on global warming solutions, might be better spent on energy independence, repairing or replacing our crumbling infrastructure, improving our shelters and coping mechanisms to deal with weather-related events and to continue to reduce real pollution in our local communities.

-- steve

Reference Links …

The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder - WSJ.com